On the Benefits Cap - Evidence, Belief and 'What Works'

Iain Duncan Smith - who happens to be Secretary of State for Work and Pensions as well as my MP - thinks the benefit cap is working. More than that, he has "a belief" that it is working, according to an interview he gave on Radio 4's Today programme. That's OK then...

Perhaps this is a dispute over IDS' definition of "works," in that the ONS criticised him for claiming that the £26k cap had resulted in 8,000 people moving into work (in the absence of any causal link), whereas the Secretary of State might be thinking it "works" rather well as a populist electioneering straregy, what with nearly 80% people supporting it in principle.

Or perhaps it's another (depressingly common) example of inconvenient statistics being sidelined by a Minister, in favour of 'belief' in their preferred policy. Whether or not a policy works shouldn't be an article of faith, it should be a matter of setting up an hypothesis (capping benefits will move people from shirking to striving), testing it in a pilot (as happened here, in London), then learning the lessons. IDS appears to think that if the evidence on the policy is sketchy, or incomplete, or simply contradicts his original hypothesis, it is the stats/evidence that must be wrong, for his belief tells him his policy is right.

At the beginning of September, I will start a new job, working on evidence-based policy - and I'll have a particular focus on social policy areas such as crime, justice, education and employment. We cannot continue to tolerate government's failure to respect evidence, nor can we look away whilst belief trumps mere statistics - IDS and his faith in his policies, despite evidence to the contrary, will no doubt keep me busy!